Alexa Skill Blueprints: How it is Created and How to Take Advantage

Blueprints is now available in Spanish, a tool that allows you to create skills for Alexa without writing a single line of code. So, if you have a speaker or device compatible with Amazon’s voice assistant, you should know how Blueprints works and how to take advantage of them.

Alexa Blueprints, what is it

Alexa Skill Blueprints

The first thing is to know what all this Blueprints is. As you can guess by name, Alexa Skill Blueprints is just a way to create new skills from predefined templates . These include a series of fields that you will have to fill out to get answers or personalized actions.

All this without writing a single line of code . Therefore, the task of creating new skills for the Amazon assistant is simplified much more and makes it easier for any user, regardless of their programming knowledge, to expand the possibilities of Alexa in their daily use.

The possibilities of Blueprints for Alexa

Currently, Alexa Blueprints offer different categories that will allow you to get different types of responses or actions. These are simple a priori things, much more than what the skills created by code allow, but still it is interesting to take a look at all its possibilities. Because for certain basic and recurring tasks it is much more optimal to resort to them. These are the basic categories that currently exist :

  • Fun and games
  • House
  • Communities and organizations
  • Learning and knowledge

Within each of them you will find different templates that in turn can be configured in various ways so that you can take advantage of them as you see fit.

Here you will depend a lot on your imagination as a user to get the most out of each of them. And it is that you can change the approach with which they were initially created, to adapt and solve other needs.

How Skill Blueprints Are Created

Creating a template through Blueprints is a very simple process. bBasically you just have to choose the template that best suits your need and fill in the different fields.

Each of these fields offers sample text and a brief explanation so that you are clear about how it affects the use of the skill . So you just have to follow the instructions step by step and little else. Of course, the ideal process to take advantage of the service would be the following:

  1. Be clear about the objective , to assess whether or not there is an option to carry it out with Blueprints
  2. Choose the template you are going to work with
  3. Define a name for your Skill that is easy to remember, short and unique. Be careful with this because once the name is established you will not be able to use it in future skills
  4. Fill in the different fields proposed by each template to achieve the action you are looking for
  5. Click Create and test. If you later want to share with other users, you can also do it

With your skill ready you only have to go to this website to make sure that the word Created is displayed next to it . If so, then you can already use it on your speaker or smart devices with Alexa.

Only one last note, starting will only be associated with the account with which they were created and that will have to match the one you used to configure your speaker. The latter is something you can know by asking your speaker or device with Alexa “Who am I”.

How to use Alexa Skill Blueprints

Once you have your blueprints created, using them is as simple as activating Alexa and telling it the unique name that you assigned to that skill. If there is no problem, it will execute the programmed actions and interactions and that’s it.

In case of detecting that there is a problem, you can always go back to the web and make the appropriate modifications. You can even disable them if you shared it with more users and you don’t want them to continue using it until everything is correct. But beware of the option to delete, because although it is possible, the name used for the skill will not be reused in the future for another.

Ideas to take advantage of your Blueprints skills

As you can see, and if we do not confirm it, Blueprints is an important novelty that can give a lot of play to users of an Amazon Echo or any other device with Alexa. It is true that compared to the skills that can be programmed by other users or yourself with some knowledge of code, they are not the same, but they can give a lot of play.

For example, you can create skills to welcome your guests, so they can ask them basic things like where is such a site or how to access the wifi network for guests. You can also create skills that your children can interact with. You could even create your own story service for them to ask Alexa to play one for them before they go to sleep.

All this without the need to chop a single line of code . Which may seem like a small thing, but we assure you that it is the opposite. Of course, the first ones may be somewhat basic, but as you discover new options yourself, you combine with other amazon features and the different products where you can use Alexa, things change for the better.